Poo Bear Discusses His New Album ‘Bearthday Music’ & Reveals His Real First Hit On ‘For The Record’

Jason Boyd, best known as Poo Bear, may not be a household name, but the four-time Grammy winner has written massive hits for the likes of Usher,112, and Justin Bieber. After nearly two decades in the music industry, the Connecticut native recently released his debut solo album Poo Bear Presents: Bearthday Music featuring appearances from Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Ty Dolla $ign, Jay Electronica, and more. In the latest episode of Genius' For the Record, Boyd shared the process behind Bearthday Music, explained how he discovered music as a passion, and reflected upon his career as a songwriter.

Boyd explained that the diverse guest list was partly motivated by how people now listen to music. “The whole point in me doing an album that is genre-less is so that, it’s just the way that music is consumed now,” Boyd said. “That was a goal, to literally make a body of work so that each playlist I can support it with a song. And when you take and you consume the music and you hear it, it doesn’t feel foreign and it doesn’t feel strange. Because with people now, streaming is the most popular way to consume music. Now, when you’re listening to it and you hear my album and it’s jumping around from genres, it doesn’t feel bad. It doesn’t feel weird, because that’s what your playlists are doing to you anyway.”

He also broke down how his songwriting process changes while working with collaborators. “If I’m working with someone else, for someone else, for them it becomes more of a tailoring thing,” Boyd stated. “I’m tailoring a suit for this artist with the artist, and it is going to 1000% be different from a suit that I’m tailoring, if I’m just making a suit for fun.” He added, “In tailor-making that suit for that artist, I’m still using my formula, but it’s still a tailoring. It’s still something completely different from what I would just do if I was making a suit by myself.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Boyd recalled how he was at first forbidden from listening to secular music until restrictions were lifted following his parents' divorce. “Growing up my father’s a preacher, my mom’s religious. When they were together, it was strict and I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music,” he said. “I was sneaking, listening to Stevie Wonder at 2 in the morning with my headphones on.” Once they divorced, however, Boyd used his newfound freedom to listen to rappers like Ice Cube, N.W.A., and Too $hort before gravitating toward “weird indie rock.”

To close out the episode, Boyd revealed that he wrote his first hit record, “Anywhere,” for 112 while he was in the 10th grade. “‘Peaches and Cream’ was not my first hit record, ‘We Can Do it Anywhere’ was, by 112,” he said. “And I was 15, in High School, in the 10th grade, when that record was done.”